Old Dog, New Tricks
by Lightning Skies
Summary: Moriarty captured John when the pool exploded, a year later Sherlock finally tracks them down


Old Dog, New Tricks

Lightning_skies

_Interesting, that soldier fellow. He could be the making of my brother. Or make him worse than ever._ - Mycroft, Study in Pink

_Don't make people into heroes John. Heroes don't exist and if they did I wouldn't be one of them._ - Sherlock, Great Game

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><p>The case hadn't even been difficult - intricate, yes - but not difficult. A mere unravelling of a long but uncomplicated weave of facts and evidence, time consuming, but not engrossing. As simple as following a wide boulevard to its end. It had been, of course, the criminal mastermind version of a carefully embossed handwritten invitation. He never bothered entertaining the idea of calling off. He would be attending this little meet-up, no matter that it was sure to be a trap of some sort. He was even less concerned with such things lately, throwing his life on the line for meaningless reasons. Of course, this was in no way meaningless. This hunt was more important than any that had come before.<p>

James 'Jim' Moriarty had stolen away John, his flatmate, his doctor, his _friend_ and left no clues with which Sherlock could track them. Remembering the unbearably listless energy of the last year, he was struck with the uncomfortable truth behind his once glib comment on being 'lost without his blogger'. He needed John back, but had no chance of finding him until another move was made by his opponent- a crime, a mistake, anything. John's capture was not a previously meditated event. There was no planning, it was merely an opportunity taken advantage of, and, as with so many crimes of opportunity, without forethought there were no clues of what would be done next. He hated impulsiveness in criminals, it was so inelegant.

Moriarty though, had elevated it to a new level and achieved it with eminent grace under the quite literal fire of the burning pool building collapsing around him and taking the lives of no less than seven ex-military snipers. Even Mycroft's ever present eye had lost sight of the highly anonymous black car when the city wide CCTV feed had been corrupted for a solid two minutes. It galled the consulting detective to think that he was forced to wait upon someone else's actions to help him. But here it was, the end of his wait and reward for his restraint.

This was the first overtly 'Moriarty' case since their last game; all the other crimes had traces of his presence, but nothing that indicated any depth of thought or interest, merely business as usual for the consulting criminal. It was obviously habitual routine and nowhere near representative of his best effort. The crimes were frankly messy to an atrocious level when compared to prior capers, they were an unpolished afterthought and spoke of distraction and preoccupation, the diversion most definitely taking the form of one captive invalided veteran.

This one, the invitation, had been different. This time there was a bit of flair to it that the others had been missing. It had been simple to trace Lestrade's dead engineer to exposing the widespread corruption present in the contracts awarded to the civil engineering companies for the second round of enabling work on the Crossrail addition to the Underground. Contracts that had been awarded in March, the very month when he had last seen John and his arch-nemesis. All he had to do was realize that, of the contracts offered, the dead man had worked for the company contracted to do the demolition works for the Crossrail Tottenham Court Road Station.

Which was how Sherlock found himself led here, deep under Dean Street in Central London, in a rough, unfinished tunnel blasted for the Crossrail line. He could hear the rumble of the Tube above him as the world continued blithely on, unaware of the importance of events occurring beneath the inane trampling of their banal little lives. His eyes darted around, inspecting and mentally cataloguing what he could see in the dim light. He was already here, Sherlock could feel it, the malevolent pair of eyes lurking in the darkness just outside of his perception, watching him. "I know you're here. Don't you want to come play with me? Wasn't that the point?"

There was only silence in response to his words as he kept turning, gaze searching through the strange shadows behind machinery and pallets of construction materials, identifying and picking out their use- here tiles, there a pile of powdered concrete and rebar, and farther off were the stacks of rail. "Olly... olly... oxen free... "

"Ah, you seem to have cau~ght me. And so... we meet agai~n. We've Really _got_ to stop meeting like this, Sher-lock." Jim Moriarty's very distinctive vocal modulation, with the emphasis in all the wrong places rang out through the tunnel. The faint echo was a reminiscent parallel of the acoustics present in a shut up pool after hours, the rushing of the train and murmur of several hundred commuters' voices taking the place of gently lapping water and the whirr of filters. Such a flair for the dramatic. "This is turning into a regular trad-ition of Ours. You call... I answer. I call... you answer. It's SO heartwarming that we'll al-ways have each other."

He stepped out of the shadows and Sherlock saw him clearly for the first time in over a year. He was immaculately dressed as always. Hands buried casually in his pockets as he reveled in his element. If cloak and dagger mannerisms were an acquired taste then Jim Moriarty was a connoisseur. An unassuming little man dressed meticulously in his dark bespoke suit as he pulled the threads of the world from behind the scenes. He was the very image of a genteel business man- or a criminal mastermind, but there were few other than Sherlock who would make that particular deduction.

"Yes, and why _did_ you call?" Sherlock drawled, his excitement narrowing his focus to a burning laser point. He had been waiting for this moment for what felt like an age. He was so close to finding John. He needed to know what Moriarty had done with him, where he was, if he was even still alive after so long. No- he couldn't think like that. Moriarty was enough of an egoist that he would have been overcome with the desire to recount all the messy details if he had killed John, if only so that Sherlock could properly 'admire' his handiwork. "I was under the impression that you were... inconvenienced by my interest."

"Why, Sherlock, you _almost_ sound as if you _aren't _Ha-ppy to se~e me. And here _I_ was, missing _you_ So terr-ibly." The sing-song articulation was irritating and jarring to a carefully calculated degree. Moriarty's face contorted into a facade of tearful rejection for a moment before brightening again. "Would seeing a more frien~dly face help you... turn that frown _upside-down_?"

Sherlock's sharp ears heard the distinctive clicking at some obtuse angle behind and to the left of him that indicated the chambering of a round. The path of Moriarty's eyes led over his shoulder and he slowly turned around to see John standing there, a mere arms length away, solid and real, with his gun steadily trained on Sherlock's temple. In all the time he'd spent living with the man, he had never known him to move so silently. It was a bit of his military training that had been dulled and lost with the acquisition of the psychosomatic limp. It is, after all, very difficult to walk silently while limping.

"John...?" Sherlock could feel his eyes widening reflexively as he took in all the small details of his erstwhile companion. Gone were the comfortable jumpers and friendly air. This John Watson dressed in the homemade version of a paramilitary or special forces uniform, all pockets, belts and ammunition bandoliers over black. He even wore combat boots rather than his customary trainers and had a wicked looking knife strapped to his waist. There was no hesitation in his posture or expression, his hands were steady and his eyes glinted in lucid focus. Everything about him was off- was _wrong._

John didn't say anything, but moved around Sherlock to stand by Moriarty's side, gun trained on the paler than usual detective all the while. This was not _his_ John Watson, everything about him, manner to clothing, fit with Moriarty. They looked _right_ together, in a sickeningly perverse way. He felt his world view shift drastically. How could his John ever fit so well with that man when he was already so perfectly fitted to Sherlock. Their broken pieces had slotted together comfortably from their first meeting, but _this_ John was obviously moulded out of the dangerous soldier underneath the mild mannered doctor. He was all hard edges and carefully restrained violence.

He was all _wrong._

Moriarty had somehow scraped away all those soft edges Sherlock had loved so much, dismantling everything that made John so unassumingly perfect. He had stripped away the quirky smile, the perfect cuppa and the hesitant two finger typing, the running across London for a text, the giggling guiltily at a crime scene and the chinese at two AM. There was no forgiveness or compassion in this John Watson and for a moment, Sherlock hated him for it- for not being his John anymore. Hated him for being divested completely of everything important and surviving it- as if proving that those completely crucial fundamental pieces that made him John were superfluous. He was a mockery of himself. It was aberrant that those perfectly Sherlock shaped pieces could be carved out of him and leave anything left.

"I once warned you that I would... ah... _burn_ the heart out of you if you kept being Disruptive. OB-VIOUSLY that hasn't worked out qu~ite the way I imagined it." Moriarty's eyes flicked to John in an unspoken signal and Sherlock was momentarily distracted that 'Jim from IT' could have such a close relationship with the (not _his_) Doctor. The moment was abruptly interrupted when John shifted his gun into his off hand and buried his fist deep in Sherlock's gut. He collapsed to his knees in shock and pain, gasping for breath. That was no love tap. The good doctor was playing for keeps and he was playing on the opposite side.

"This is SO much better, do~n't you think Sher-lock? The way your heart _beats_ for Me." Moriarty stepped up behind John and wound his arms around the tensed body, setting his chin down on John's shoulder. More deliberate allusions to their last meeting, when John and Moriarty's roles were reversed in a futile attempt to save his life, highlighting the fact that John's loyalty had changed. Sherlock's eyes narrowed at the gesture and something twisted unpleasantly in his gut at the minute relaxation of John's muscles as he leaned imperceptibly back into the slightly taller malefactor. This bodily familiarity was not something new. They were used to casually touching one another.

w_.wrong_ his mind continued chanting.

"What have you done?" He gasped, his diaphragm still temporarily paralyzed from the blow to his abdomen, disallowing the normal flow of oxygen into his lungs and more importantly his brain. It didn't help that his chest seemed to be on fire, he viciously stomped down the idea that it's cause was anything but the muscles suffering minor oxygen deprivation.

_Wrong_ was whispered from somewhere deep inside. _He's burning the heart out of you_

"_Me_? Who says _I've_ Done any-thing? _Perhaps_ our dea~r Doc-tor John Watson is a smarter man than _you_ ever gave him credit for. HE's chosen to back the win~ning team after-all. They say, you Can't teach an old dog new... tricks. I always _did_ like proving 'them' wro~ng." He rubbed the side of his face against John's cheek like an affectionate cat, cold eyes sparkling at Sherlock's discomfort. "But I'm not here to Kiss and Tell. This is _not_ about me bragging that he likes me bet~ter. Which he Does, _of-course_."

"And, I'm to believe that he is completely free and clear of any coercion?" Sherlock scoffed, mind still scrambling to comprehend.

"Well~... _yeah._ Rape is no fun at _all_, not when you can have someone Willing. Someone des-perate to _please_." Moriarty taunted with a grin. "Not when him wanting it hu-rts SO much mo~re. Can't blame it all on little old evil me when _he's _pos-i-tiv-ely gag-ging for it." He nipped at John's earlobe and chuckled at the faint groan it elicited. "_Tell_ him, John. Tell him a~ll about _us_."

It took John a moment to collect himself and for the bright blue eyes that had rolled back in pleasure to focus on Sherlock's face. "I've killed for him, Sherlock. God help me, I've killed for him and I've liked it. I'll do it again in an instant. He makes it all so easy. No guilt, no hesitation. My hand hasn't had a tremor in a year, my nightmares are gone. No accountability. Complete absolution from all my sins. It's unholy and _wrong_ and I love it."

His heart lurched as John's voice joined the litany of _.wrong_ inside him.

"John. This isn't you." Sherlock pleaded.

"_OF COURSE_ it's him. Did you _not_ see him after he killed that _poor... ill..._ cabbie in cold blood. How could You _not_ have seen it then? Some de-du-ctive reasoner you are. Completely calm and collected, not a _trace _of re~morse. You _see_, my lovely de-tec-tive, Every man has a threshold that Will make him kill. John here, is luck~y enough to have had years of service to the crown that benevolently... _obliterated_ that line for him. I just had to free him from the remains of his Troublesome conscience. All that icky right versus wrong _morality_." He said it as if morality was a common irritation the population suffered, like a seasonal cold or allergies.

_Wrong. _There it was again. The word kept getting louder, drowning out any other thoughts, screaming in every voice he knew.

"So, you see, Sher-lock dear, what this par-ti-cular lit~tle chess game is about is _you_. John has proved he is perfectly willing to sacrifice himself for those he... loves. The next move is yours. Will you sacrifice your precious queen just to take out mine, since they're one in the same? You could probably find a sneaky way to kill me without his interference, but we both know he would hold one doozy of a grudge. Can you handle breaking his precious heart?" Down to business and the verbal ticks and randomized accentuation in his speech faded into a smooth accented drawl. There would be no misunderstandings between them.

Sherlock stared at John in mute appellation, but didn't know what he was asking for. He finally understood how others felt when he tore their worlds apart with a few good observations, pointing out things they had never bothered to notice. He thought of when he was a child and all the others had such blind faith in the magic of the world and the devastation they seem to have felt when he explained that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy were fictitious and adults were liars. His chaotic, ever whirling mind had fallen completely silent except for one word, making him feel small and lost. Ignorance is bliss. He had never believed that before.

Everything was so very very _wrong_.

-_Not good?_-

-_It's a bit not good, yeah._-

There was expectant silence, Sherlock didn't bother to get up off the ground, mind tangling about itself uselessly.

"It seems you finally understand your position. We'll just... be off and let you think about it then. Ball is in your court and all that." Moriarty paused- a half step out of the light, facing out into the shadowed tunnel, a creature of anonymous faceless darkness that had found a way to briefly maneuver in the brighter world but was now returning home. "Oh, and Sherlock, if you do decide to keep getting in my way... Well. Be _still _yourbeating heart. No more chances."

Sherlock couldn't find an answer as he stared deep into John's eyes. Guarded eyes that just watched him, not reflecting any of the awe, companionship or slight hero worship he had grown accustomed to. These eyes didn't wait with eager anticipation for him to spout off something impressive and brilliant, instead they were the eyes he saw in the mirror every day, calculating, derisive and coldly watchful. Eyes that were _wrong._

"Well, this has been lovely, once again, but people aren't going to off themselves now are they? Not the ones who are right in the head anyway. Ta-ta for now, my darling detective."

"John!" Sherlock called after the man he considered his one and only friend as he turned to follow. _.wrongwrongwrong John doesn't belong in the dark._

Slowly those blue eyes turned back to him, showing emotion for the first time. For an instant it was good ol' ever-suffering John Watson, faithful sidekick to a slightly infuriating genius detective looking at him apologetically. "It seems I'm not the only one imagining people into heroes Sherlock. Even if they do exist, I'm certainly not one of them. I'm not sure I ever was."

Then the moment was gone and a cold, war hardened man swept his eyes over the tall form crumpled in the dirt once more and saw nothing of value. With a military precise movement he about faced and walked away, this time ignoring the cries of his name.

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><p>Crossrail stuff was found on Wiki. I know nothing about the Underground.<p>

First time writing for this fandom, so it was a bit experimental. I tried to capture Moriarty's very unique way of talking, but think it may have come off a little too Heath Ledger's Joker.


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